


the head of the demon

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Series: hollywood ancient world au [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Parallel Love Story, Patricide Played for Laughs, Prologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 01:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10426374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: “Who are you?” Talia goes for her sword, but finds her belt and armor gone. No matter. Her bare hands will do.“They call me the Bat.” A clearing of the throat. “Not that I encourage it.”a talia-centric prologue--you don't have to read the first part, just know that this is is set in a splashy, bloody, silly ancient world au.





	

**Author's Note:**

> if you did read 'to tame;' know the parallels are intentional lmao. i really don't know what i'm doing ok i'm just having a good time. title from the translation of ra's al ghul's name that dc provides, for reasons you'll...see.
> 
>  **warnings:** lots of references to violence and death in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, vomiting, sexual references.

The Demon’s Head is _not_ a moniker based on appearance.

It is, like so many facets of life so unfortunately are, influenced by patrilineage.

They call--well, _called_ \--her father the Demon. 

A fearsome ruler and warrior, a man thought of as more than a man. How he inspired an almost supernatural terror in his enemies she always admired, but never understood. To her, he was simply an old goat who meddled far too much to do in her personal affairs.

She was loyal to him, yes, for much of her life. Had she not poisoned his poisoners, assassinated his assassins? Unfair that she could be considered a poor example of filial fidelity because of _one_ mistake.

On the eve of her fourteenth birthday, her father placed a hand on her sword arm and told her placidly, as though he were not tearing her life to shreds, that she would be married at dawn.

She hadn’t realized what happened afterwards, despite the attendants’ shrieking, for a long moment. (The attendants were always shrieking.) It was only when her mother ran in on one long scream that she looked down and saw her father’s head at her slippered feet.

Her mother, who had only been tethered to the family by a filament of sanity, fled. She left behind her most trusted guards, who were to escort Talia to her groom.

After half a night’s ride with those five men, with their belching and their innuendoes, she requested privacy so that she could bathe. Up to her knees in water, she picked them off one by one with her bow and arrow. Then, feeling dirty from a joke one of them had made about a camel, she finished her bath.

She did not regret what had happened to her father. They were not her favorite slippers.

And he smelled. He was forever taking dips in a sulfurous pool that he claimed held the secrets to eternal youth. All the soaks did was stretch the skin around his mouth tighter like a corpse sucking in a shroud and make him reek like the very dead risen from their graves.

Besides, they called him _the Demon._ A _popular_ leader he was not.

The point is, they do not call her the Demon’s Head for her _looks._

Again, she is stunningly gorgeous. Captivatingly beautiful. Men tell her so in droves, many in hopes that she will spare them. 

Of course, she does not let their flattery sway her. Praising her beauty makes for lovely last words.

She likes nothing better, however, than being called _magnificent._

 

The man who calls her _magnificent_ is called...Brutus.

It is a tragically common name, not designed at all for wistful sighs on balmy nights. Every last tooth-puller and armpit-plucker is named Brutus. 

For him, she will make do, for he is an _uncommon_ man.

She first encounters him when she is completely disoriented and in the midst of ejecting her entrails through her mouth, as all the best meetings happen.

“Your men and women fled,” says a low voice.

Swallowing back the acrid taste of her vomit, she peers into the shadows until she sees the half-moon of a pale face.

“Who are you?” Talia goes for her sword, but finds her belt and armor gone. No matter. Her bare hands will do.

“They call me the Bat.” A clearing of the throat. “Not that I encourage it.”

The Bat. She flattens her palms on the floor and reconsiders her attack. Yes, she has heard of the Bat. They were cautioned not to approach the hills, which made Talia order her men to charge them. A mere tale told by superstitious border-folk, she had assumed, of some dark beast who spread smoke on his wings.

This man is pasty for a dark beast.

“I know the feeling.” She stands, her legs wobbling like a colt’s. Before he can offer assistance, she catches her shoulder on the cave wall. “They would not stop speaking of the Demon’s head, so I had it painted on my banner.”

A marvelous thing in green, a terrific horned head with sharp teeth. (Perhaps her father would have appreciated the spirit of it.)

“About your banner.” The Bat looks sheepish. “You vomited on that as well. I did not know the gas was an emetic, but you were exposed to larger amounts of it than I anticipated.”

Talia’s gut twinges. Ah. Her supposed soldiers had run _from_ the cloud of gas; she had run _into_ it. “Tell me why I should not kill you, Bat.”

“Brutus,” he corrects. “I did nurse you back to health.” Kneeling by the pool, he begins to wash his hands. They are callused, but she thinks not battle-hardened. 

A song of metal against rock as she picks up the sword stripped from her. Before he can turn, she lays her blade across his nape.

He bows his head. She can see his disaffected expression reflected in the pool. “Did your father not teach you the rules of hospitality?”

“My father is _dead._ I killed him.”

He seems to be about sixteen years of age, the same as Talia. Surely he has seen less violence than Talia has in that time. Still, Brutus does not flinch. His stoicism is--appealing. “As is mine, though not by my hand, and yet I did not leave you for dead, Demon’s Head.”

She will concede the point. With a sigh, she sheathes her sword and grumbles, “My name is Talia.”

 

Within an hour of waking, Talia wanted to depart. 

Brutus convinced her that he needed to monitor her for the next two days.

On the third day, she pressed his cool palm to her forehead and insisted she must stay, as she still burned with fever.

Not untrue.

He has hair like night and eyes like morning.

No one has ever made her feel this way. Part of the reason she wants to keep him close is so that she can kill him in case the flitter in her stomach becomes too irritating.

Brutus does not seem inclined to come close, however.

 

“What in the world are you doing here?” she asks him, not for the first time, as she watches him pound up beetles and mash them up into another vile concoction. 

“This border has seen too much blood from too many people.” Brutus stirs leaf-pulp into the clay bowl, then complains that she is casting a shadow.

Talia takes a step back. “And what, you are trying to keep it inside their bodies?”

“By any means necessary,” Brutus agrees.

He distracts and diverts troops, confuses clashes between armies, and heals the fallen. Bizarre.

“Will you show me?”

“Do you truly want to know?”

“No.”

Brutus’s mouth does something she might classify as a smirk before he turns her question on her. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Exploring the ends of the world I mean to conquer.”

“You want to conquer the world?” 

Most people question her when she says that. 

Most people question _her:_ you, slip of a girl, you with lips made for kissing and not for battle-cries, _you_ would conquer the world?

Brutus seems to be questioning _anyone's_ desire to cross the continent in a stride.

Talia huffs. “That is the plan for the present.”

“Strange,” Brutus murmurs.

“No stranger than you,” she insists.

That makes Brutus smile, a small smile but a _true_ smile. She wants him dead. “I never claimed that.”

 

Striding into the Cave, Talia unstraps her sword and drops it at Brutus’s feet. “I want your child.”

Brutus’s first reaction is to sweep Deinarchos out of sight.

“I already have parents,” Deinarchos pipes up helpfully from behind him.

In the near-decade since their first meeting, she has revisited his Cave on occasion. Brutus has grown into his jawline, occasional breakouts of stubble instead of acne on his cheeks, and he becomes more like the stone that surrounds him year by year. 

As for Talia, her goals have shifted somewhat. 

During these intervening years, she has found that seeking power and wielding it are not always compatible. 

Negotiating taxes is not an easy feat when the king’s entire court is _pissing themselves_ every time she raises an eyebrow. And she does _not_ have her eyebrows done so they can stay pasted to her brow-bone.

So she changes her strategy.

She will still close her fist around the world: she will just train someone else to hand it to her first.

Therefore, she has not relinquished her ultimate goal, as she told Brutus yesterday for the satisfaction of reminding him that time has not mellowed her madness. (As he thinks of it.)

Of course, he remains as smug as ever, there is no changing that, either. But this boy is changing him already, she can tell, and Brutus’s selection of him as student beckons her to keep close watch on his growth as the seasons turn.

Brutus turns to the boy now. “Deinarchos, leave us.”

Deinarchos sulks. “ _You_ leave.” Despite similar coloring in the hair and the eyes, the boy’s golden skin and features betray that he is not Brutus’s blood son. And yet the affection is there. Not to mention a familial resemblance in strangeness.

They call this boy _the Robin._ He can throw his little voice into the hills like a flock of birds or if he wishes, a hundred men. His talents are used not to lure, but to disorient. She imagines that like his mentor, he will show no interest in killing even once he gets large enough to lift a sword.

Talia hears he also does hair and makeup.

Brutus stands and beckons to Talia. “Come.”

“You know what I meant. I wish to conceive a child with you,” Talia shouts after him as she watches him leap from hilltop to hilltop. Her voice echoes embarrassingly. “Come down from that hill! Did your father never teach you how to treat a woman?”

“My parents are dead!” Brutus roars.

“That does not have to mean the end of your family!”

That makes Brutus pause. Long cloak flapping around him, he stares down at her. “Are you certain it is not _your_ line you wish to perpetuate?”

“Brutus,” Talia snaps, “what part of _I killed my father_ do you not understand?”

Brutus pauses again and tips his head. And then he’s coming down the hill and into her arms because this man is nothing but not a contradiction, and perhaps it’s the frustration of it more than anything that draws her again and again to his side.

Twining herself around him, she rests her head against his chest. “Was that a _yes?”_

An outright _tender_ kiss to her hair, and she knows she has him. “That was an, ‘I won’t dismiss the possibility.’”


End file.
